What Really Happened In The Garden Of Eden?

WAS IT REALLY ABOUT NOT EATING THAT APPLE?

Satan tempting Eve asked her, “Has God really said…” (Genesis 3:1). He was basically saying God’s word is unreliable, He is just trying to keep you from having your eyes opened because He knows when you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you will be as gods yourself.’ When God said this He was not trying to keep something from us that was good for us. And He certainly was not trying to take away our power of choice. He was a loving God trying to teach the first humans something very important. He was trying to keep us from having the burden of having to decide what was good and what was evil. He was basically saying, ‘Trust me, I want only the best for you and let me show you what is evil and what is good’. He created us. He knows what He built into us and what is best for us. He wanted us to have the most fulfilled life we could possibly have.

Think of the Bible as an instruction manual

His Word is the instruction manual to what works best for us. We write instruction manuals as humans when we invent things. In these manuals, we describe how to put something together and how to best maintain it. We invented it. We know what is best for our creation. When

we buy something and an instruction manual comes with it we don’t sit down and read it with suspicion or try to put it together some other way than described. We are confident that if we assemble this item we bought and use it the way the creator of this item says it will work for as long a life as it was designed to work. Yet that is exactly what we do when we question what the Word of God says. The creator of all living things including human beings spent time with the first humans instructing them, loving them, and teaching them. As time went on, He instructed certain people to write down His Word so it would always be available to future generations. He saw human hearing becoming more and more dull and though they would not hear His voice He made sure they had a point of reference, an authoritative written word we could trust. Enter Satan once again casting doubt on whether the Bible can be trusted. When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they didn’t just eat a fruit they took right and wrong, good and evil into their own hands for them to decide. Then where does that leave us when flawed human beings decide what is right and wrong? Moral Relativism. In Hitler’s mind, he was right and everyone else was wrong and he felt completely justified in killing six million Jews. Where does it end? If what is right and what is wrong is decided based on the ‘flavor of the day’, where does it end? Who is right? So, where does that lead? Our lives become based on some menu handed to us to decide who we will believe and WHAT we will believe. Yet it is written, “God’s Word is FOREVER settled in Heaven” (Psalms 119:89) and “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).